Trick-or-Treat

So Halloween is quickly approaching and I decided that with barely a week left it was time to finally figure out what Halloween costume I would be sporting this Halloween. Now I know it sounds silly but after just one year I had forgotten how much I hate buying a Halloween costume.

Reason #1: The Price

Buying a pre-made Halloween costume costs the most ridiculous amount of money, anywhere between $20 and $90, plus then you have to buy the accessories to go with the costume. In the picture the girl is all dressed up in all the items you need to make your costume perfect, but when you are actually holding the costume you quickly realize that everything but that little dress is sold separately. You almost need to take out a loan to buy this costume that you are only going to wear once, and only for a few hours at that.

Reason #2: The Line

Now this one is probably completely my fault. If I was smart I would either go during the day or earlier when the Halloween costumes first came out but I am a master procrastinator so this will never happen. Sadly it seems most of Winnipeg is like me and less then a week before Halloween we climb into our cars and drive out to the costume store. Party Stuff on Regent is my favorite; I go there every year, along with half the city... We go and look at those really small pictures on the wall then stand in line to tell that poor, underpaid worker what number and size we want, praying they still have it left. Then wait what seems like hours (actually only about 10 minutes) for then to find it in the back. Then you go up and down the crowded aisles to find all the necessary and the unnecessary-but-can't-live-without accessories to make our costume better then last year. We then look for the end of the cashier line, which wraps around the whole store... twice, cursing all these people for shopping the same day as you. No need to feel bad about this, they are all cursing you as well. After spending half your life in line you finally get out of the store, only to have to wait in line to leave the parking lot. It is at this point every year you tell yourself, Sam next year you will go early. And you believe it for about 5 minutes.

Reason #3: How Small Are These Costumes

Ok ladies, I have some news for you. You know who you are. Just because it is Halloween does not qualify as a good enough reason to wear a shirt for a dress or a top that shows everything from across the room. I know, I know that is pretty much all they sell these days. Maybe if you just look a little harder.... And to you people designing the costumes. Please, please use a little more fabric. For the prices you charge you can add a little more.

Now don't get me wrong. Really I love Halloween. It is one of my favorites, I mean free candy and getting to be whatever you want for a day, what's not to love. But costumes.... oh costumes.... you make me broke....

Happy Halloween Everyone!

This Thanksgiving I was thankful for....

This past weekend was one of my favourite weekends of the year. Thanksgiving weekend! I consider any reason to get together with friends and family and eat a HUGE amount of food, especially when its turkey, is a great thing. This year I was in charge of making dessert, so I decided, seeing as it’s Thanksgiving and all, to make some pies. Now I hate pumpkin pie, therefore I refused to make it. So after a long deliberation on yummy and not so yummy pies I decided on apple pie and lemon-meringue pie.

So my mom and me headed out to the grocery store to battle it out with the other shoppers for Thanksgiving Day cuisine. We managed to find everything and were so excited to get out of the busy Sobeys, both vowing to shop early but both knowing that was never going to happen. We finally made it home both alive only to find that we forgot to get the pie crust.

Now how in the world am I supposed to make my yummy pies with out the crust? I couldn’t come up with a way either; so back off to the store I went. Lucky for me I live only about two minutes from an Extra Foods, so there I headed… alone… I had no idea of what was about to happen…

So I’m walking in Extra Foods and all the way in the back corner is where they keep the pie crusts. I’m trying to make my way through the endless carts, hoping to make it out alive. Then I see it. The heavens open up and the angels start singing, it is the last box of pie crusts. The very last one.

I very happily open the freezer and grab the box, shamelessly doing my “I-got-the-last-pie-crusts” dance, and turn around to head for the checkout. This is the part where it starts getting messy. This old lady stops me and says, “I need those pie crusts”.

Now I’m thinking what in the world is this lady talking about. I must have had some weird look on my face as if I didn’t understand her so she repeated her previous comment as she grabs for the box I’m holding in my hands.

Now I’m standing in the aisle, pulling on one end of the box while the old lady is pulling on the other end.

“ I’m sorry but this is my box,” I said politely.

“But I need them”

“But these ones are mine”

“ There are no more”

“But I have this box, go find some somewhere else.”

“I want these ones”

At this point I am getting angry, and a little surprised at the grip this old lady has. But I manage to get the box out of her hand, almost falling to the ground, and book it to the check out with the old lady yelling stuff at me.

I walk home, pie crusts in hand, in total shock that I just had to fight and old lady for pie. But I will say those pies were pretty tasty! This Thanksgiving I was thankful for pie!

Buyer Beware

For our advertising class we were broken up into groups for a Buyer Beware project. My group decided to examine Planet Antares/ Wealth Builder seminar. We were sceptical when we first heard about this “business adventure” and thought it was worth looking into. We got lots of the information from the company itself, as John attended the seminar Planet Antares hosted. We noticed a lot of things wrong with this idea right away.

Things such as the idea of getting rich almost overnight, the fact that in the original material that they sent out to potential investors, an initial investment of $87,192 is expected and they do not give you very long to think the idea over. The company encourages you purchasing multiple machines for the get go and they recommend you maintain a secondary source of income.

We found by going out to possible venues for the vending machines that not many people use them anymore, and the locations with large enough traffic to potentially generate a profit already had contracts with vending companies. We found that on a Saturday during the peek hours at Cindy Klassen Recreational Complex the vending machines collected less then $10 in two hours. Taking the prices we found at Costco of products to fill the machines with 1 time cost an average of $137. Also once Planet Antares has you money for the vending machines they leave you on your own to deal with everything, from finding a location to filling the machines to repairing vandalism on the machines.

We also noticed that it was hard to find any complaints on the Internet about the company, which we found shocking. So we looked into them and found out that Planet Antares has the sites they control at the beginning of the search engines. It takes until the second page before you get feedback from other sources, and the feedback is not very pretty.

As a group we decided that Planet Antares is a scam and we hope that after reading this people will stop falling into it and other scams like this which are after your money and then leave you to pick up the pieces.

Think about it

I was reading Stephenie Meyer's hit book New Moon the other day and I ran across this quote:

Before you my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars - points of light and reason. .... And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizion, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn't see the stars anymore. And there was no reason for anything

I love how she can put such feeling into these few lines. This is how i want my love to feel about me, and I'm sure when I find the right one he will.

I also ran across this quote, I'm not sure where but I love it and I fully believe in it.

To love is to risk not being loved in return, to hope is to risk pain, to try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard is to risk nothing

Think about it.